"Open Source nerds don’t have the discipline to write documentation because it’s no fun. Writing new code is fun." - as I discovered when trying to learn how to use the last 2 open source frameworks I came across.
This would be a more compelling complaint if proprietary software generally came with detailed, clearly written documentation. Which most of the time it doesn't.
In the worst cases, the proprietary software vendor expects you to pay to get access to the kind of not-end-user-oriented-but-still-useful documentation (like an API reference) that open source projects publish for free.
In other words, it's not that open source software tends to be poorly documented, it's that software tends to be poorly documented. At least with open source software you can go and look and the source code to figure out the stuff the docs leave out.
My complaint with a lot of proprietary documentation is that although it exists, it's often almost information free...
E.g., for a function called "void ReverseDirection (x)", the doc says "Reverses the direction of X", without any mention of context, possible issues, subtleties, ... just a mechanical statement of the obvious.
"Open Source nerds don’t have the discipline to write documentation because it’s no fun. Writing new code is fun." - as I discovered when trying to learn how to use the last 2 open source frameworks I came across.